Cerebral and kinetic, Abohomaan charms

Novelists and poets have used non-linear narrative technique to great effects. Film, an art form that takes a lot of money and labour to crank up, cannot always show the same agility. But among a few good directors who use it to their advantage, Christopher Nolan is foremost.

This is not just because his way of conceiving a film is unique, but also for his distinctive editing style that seamlessly fuses multiple timelines into a film's final narrative. The effects can hardly be understood by mere reading; a viewing of The Prestige is suggested. If you don't have time, depend on your recollection of the final few minutes of his more successful The Dark Knight.

The narrative anchor of an average Indian film is a straight descendant of performing arts. Its resemblance to stage performances, interestingly enough, is the common thread weaving Indian films of various regions. Very rarely you come across films that give you the impression of being conceived as a 'film'; almost every project needs a story to take off with. So, when a Rituparno Ghosh, known as an apt storyteller and much less a visual narrator, surprises us with statements like, "I feel I no longer need stories to make films," you throw a glance of disbelief at him. Does he mean it?

Watching his latest film Abohomaan helped with the answer. He probably meant it. Though fraught with the sameness of his genre at times, the film is the first successful attempt by an Indian director at spelling a narrative technique modern and singular-- complete with an editing style that makes the film look crisp and compact. Besides, it helps contain the film's duration.

Abohomaan is surprisingly kinetic on an otherwise ordinary concept that Rituparno apparently chose for its parallels in the much guessed relationship between a renowned director and a female actor. The relation between the elderly auteur Aniket (Dipankar Dey) and his protégé Shikha (Ananya Chatterjee) in the film is projected from three layers of perception - of his wife, son and muse. The storyline or the lack of it fully justifies the editing style. It gave him ample scope to play with several interpretations and to run a parallel account of the relation between 19th-century playwright Girish Ghosh and his muse Noti Binodini. But the Girish-Binodini scenes are also a big weakness of the film; you can't imagine a Binodini Dasi and Girish Ghosh with the chiselled features of Ananya and Sumantra, respectively. One might counter that the scenes merely show two actors in a film by Aniket. But such an argument would be in direct conflict with Aniket's merit as a director as shown in the film.

I asked Rituparno whether he had a separate script for editing. He said, "No". The first edit, he said, was three and a half hours long. He chopped off roughly ninety minutes in order to make it suitable for the local palate, adopting a new editing style in the process. That's good news for an industry which doesn't allow much scope for experiment. But the style takes some getting used to; it didn't go down well with many Rituparno loyals and also with a few reviewers!

Let's hope Rituparno sticks to this format. If not for anything else, then just to add some zing to Bengali film's kitschy, mediocre fare.


ilovekolkata